Importantly, I discussed that it is critical to have SEVERAL elevator speeches in your back pocket. We are all aware that we need one for that big idea we hope to pitch to the boss. And they can be very powerful when seeking to get your sales person, tech expert, or other guru embedded in the customer's office or facility. We should have elevator speeches for our company, our (departmental) services, our key staff, etc. It's a great tool, but where does the effectiveness end?

Answering this question, the wheels turn - and most of us come up with something like: "Well, I suppose elevator speeches are great for getting someone interested in something, but, beyond that, you need more detail, more meat. Right?"

Not so fast. Today's email delivered some counterpoint to that notion from none other than Guy Kawasaki.MarketingProfs' missile, titled, "What's Your Hook?" extols the "virtues of short videos that successfully communicate complex ideas in a streamlined, comprehensible way." There is a link to an example of how Guy uses an elevator presentation (59 seconds) to go beyond generating interest. He actually teaches us how to prepare a marinade. It's darn good (the instructional video). The link offers seveal examples, including a little training on email services. In that, "Sabrina Parsons, the CEO of Palo Alto Software, described the impact of the tutorial: "If a picture is worth a thousand words, our sixty-second tutorial is worth 10,000. Email services can be hard to explain to people as everyone thinks of 'email management' as different things. We were challenged in making the tutorial to clearly explain what our email management solution was, and why people need it." Wow! The explanation is almost longer than the elevator video!

Does your work HAVE to be extremely professional? Ultra-produced? Heck no. Here is an example of an elevator tutorial I made about a year ago. It is NOT slick, but it drove several contacts from people interested in no-flow underfill materials:

As of this writing, my video had "only" 654 views. But, in this long-tail world (especially for a product as funky as no-flow underfill polymers), we don't expect huge numbers. Put another way - for this target audience, 654 IS a huge number. We simply do our thing in front of a digital pocket camera, toss in a little subtitling and music, and post it (with key words). The target audience does the rest. The results are excellent.

Elevator speeches? 60-second tutorials? Should you? Can you? Well, what's your goal? If it includes being different (better), then stop trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Experiment with elevator speeches, elevator education, etc. and see if it gets your B2B marcom projects on the move.